Columbia University’s School of Social Work has received an $86 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to direct a nation-wide research effort to reduce opioid deaths in New York State.

The aim of the effort is not to initiate new interventions but rather to determine how proven strategies can be best combined in different settings — strategies from opioid education to the distribution of naloxone, a drug used to revive overdose victims, said ​Nabila El-Bassel, University Professor and the Willma and Albert Musher Professor of Social Work.

“Some of the communities we’re targeting are in rural areas where few drug-treatment services are available and where little or no research has ever been done,” said El-Bassel, who is leading the effort.

“​We are planning a rapid public-health response to the current opioid epidemic in New York State,” she added, “​focusing on policy and system changes by working with the criminal justice system, health care organizations, emergency rooms, schools, and drug treatment programs.”

The federal grant, which is one of the university’s largest ever, will unite researchers from Columbia’s School of Social Work, the Department of Psychiatry, the Mailman School of Public Health, and the Data Science Institute, Columbia. They in turn will work with colleagues from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine, the City University of New York, the Weill Cornell Medical College, New York University School of Medicine, University of Miami, and the Yale School of Medicine.

Two members of the Data Science Institute (DSI) will use advanced statistical and data-science techniques to understand the breadth and scope of New York’s opioid crisis. Vince Dorie, an Associate Research Scientist at DSI, will use statistical models to estimate the effectiveness of opioid treatments. And Smaranda Muresan, a Research Scientist at DSI and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, will collect and study data from social-media channels relating to opioid use and treatment.

The Columbia researchers will work in 15 New York counties heavily affected by the opioid crisis. The project will be conducted in collaboration with the county health commissioners and driven by robust community engagement and real-time learning rooted in data and systems science. El-Bassel and the investigative team are collaborating with the New York State Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services, the New York State Department of Health, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and 15 state and local health or mental health commissioners to coordinate their efforts to mitigate opiod use.

The Columbia-led effort is one of four launched as part of NIDA’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative; companion studies are being led in their home states by the University of Kentucky, Boston Medical Center, and Ohio State University.

El-Bassel secured the grant based on the success of her community-focused public health interventions. For the past 30 years at Columbia, she has worked in marginalized communities to combat ​HIV, substance abuse, and intimate-partner violence. In many cases, her interventions have become the gold standard for best practices in the field of social work. And in addition to her field work, she has published more than 260 peer-reviewed journal articles and her papers have been cited more than 8,000 times.

“I am delighted to be leading this extraordinarily innovative study with such an outstanding group of scientists,” El-Bassel said. “Our goals are ambitious. We plan to reduce opioid overdose fatalities by at least 40 percent within less than four years in 15 of the most burdened counties in New York State. There is no time to waste; we have lost far too many people to this epidemic.”

— Robert Florida